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“You’re wanted for smuggling, Lambton,” he said, brusquely. “Don’t stir!” In his hand was a revolver.

“Oh, bosh! Prove it,” answered the young man, pale and startled, but cool in speech and action.

“We’ll prove it all right. The stuff is hereabouts.”

The girl said something to the officer in the Chinook language. She saw he did not understand. Then she spoke quickly to Lambton in the same tongue.

“Keep him here a bit,” she said. “His men haven’t come yet. Your outfit is well hid. I’ll see if I can get away with it before they find it. They’ll follow, and bring you with them, that’s sure. So if I have luck and get through, we’ll meet at Dingan’s Drive.”

Lambton’s face brightened. He quickly gave her a few directions in Chinook, and told her what to do at Dingan’s if she got there first. Then she was gone.

The officer did not understand what Nance had said, but he realized that, whatever she intended to do, she had an advantage over him. With an unnecessary courage he had ridden on alone to make his capture, and, as it proved, without prudence. He had got his man, but he had not got the smuggled whiskey and alcohol he had come to seize. There was no time to be lost. The girl had gone before he realized it. What had she said to the prisoner? He was foolish enough to ask Lambton, and Lambton replied coolly: “She said she’d get you some supper, but she guessed it would have to be cold–What’s your name? Are you a colonel, or a captain, or only a principal private?”

“I am Captain MacFee, Lambton. And you’ll now bring me where your outfit is. March!”

The pistol was still in his hand, and he had a determined look in his eye. Lambton saw it. He was aware of how much power lay in the threatening face before him, and how eager that power was to make itself felt, and provide “Examples”; but he took his chances.

“I’ll march all right,” he answered; “but I’ll march to where you tell me. You can’t have it both ways. You can take me, because you’ve found me, and you can take my outfit, too, when you’ve found it; but I’m not doing your work, not if I know it.”

There was a blaze of anger in the eyes of the officer, and it looked for an instant as though something of the lawlessness of the border was going to mark the first step of the Law in the Wilderness, but he bethought himself in time, and said, quietly, yet in a voice which Lambton knew he must heed:

“Put on your things–quick.”

When this was accomplished, and MacFee had secured the smuggler’s pistols, he said again, “March, Lambton!”

Lambton marched through the moonlit night toward the troop of men who had come to set up the flag of order in the plains and hills, and as he went his keen ear heard his own mules galloping away down toward the Barfleur Coulee. His heart thumped in his breast. This girl, this prairie-flower, was doing this for him, was risking her life, was breaking the law for him. If she got through, and handed over the whiskey to those who were waiting for it, and it got bundled into the boats going North before the redcoats reached Dingan’s Drive, it would be as fine a performance as the West had ever seen; and he would be six hundred dollars to the good. He listened to the mules galloping, till the sounds had died into the distance, but he saw now that his captor had heard too, and that the pursuit would be desperate.

A half-hour later it began, with MacFee at the head and a dozen troopers pounding behind, weary, hungry, bad-tempered, ready to exact payment for their hardships and discouragement.

They had not gone a dozen miles when a shouting horseman rode furiously on them from behind. They turned with carbines cocked, but it was Abe Hawley who cursed them, flung his fingers in their faces, and rode on harder and harder. Abe had got the news from one of Nancy’s half-breeds, and, with the devil raging in his heart, had entered on the chase. His spirit was up against them all: against the Law represented by the troopers camped at Fort Stay-Awhile, against the troopers and their captain speeding after Nancy Machell–his Nance, who was risking her life and freedom for the hated, pale-faced smuggler riding between the troopers; and his spirit was up against Nance herself.